Splinter Cell

4

Police Constable Robert Perkins disliked his beat with a passion. Every night it was the same thing, except on Sundays when the theater was dark. Even days were bad because of matinees.

As the officer in charge of the area surrounding the National Theatre in London, PC Perkins felt that supervising traffic was below his station. Nevertheless, he did it without complaint. He didn’t actually have to direct traffic — thank God for that — except in the case of an emergency, a royal event, or if some idiot did something to cause an accident. Perkins had walked this beat for the last twenty-two years and would probably be doing it for at least the next ten. Perkins could always put in for a transfer, but his superiors always frowned upon such requests. At age forty-three, he felt, he was becoming a bit long in the tooth for this type of work.

On weekday evenings traffic was even worse because of the business day rush hour. Waterloo Bridge loomed overhead, running from northwest to southeast across the Thames to the South Bank. The mass of vehicles traversing that particular road never let up. At rush hour, before the theater’s evening performance, it was at its worst. The “congestion charge” of £5 over and above the parking fee didn’t dissuade drivers from attempting to use the theater’s small car park. Perkins wondered why more people didn’t just take the tube and walk. Certainly it was simpler and less annoying.

Perkins usually stood at the intersection of Theatre Avenue and Upper Ground because the only place coaches could let off passengers was on Upper Ground at the back of the theater. Thus, he was practically directly beneath Waterloo Bridge and had to deal with the noise of the traffic above him. It gave him a daily headache.

It was now 6:30 and the bulk of the evening traffic was at its peak. Perkins stood at the crossroad and watched as irritable coach drivers continued to stop, then move, stop, then move. Civilian and taxi drivers moving along Theatre Avenue had even worse tempers. They expected the world to stop so that they could see the latest Shakespearean production.

Perkins had lived in London his entire life and had never been inside the National Theatre except to investigate reports of theft, sick patrons, or the occasional belligerent guest. Not once had he sat in one of the three theaters to watch something. He didn’t really care to. He wasn’t into “high brow” entertainment. When he had told his wife that, she’d replied that back in Shakespeare’s day the plays were considered entertainment for the lower and middle classes. Perkins had nothing to say to that.

A blast of car horns on Theatre Avenue pulled his attention away from a density of taxis on Upper Ground. He squinted in that direction and was aghast at what he saw moving slowly along the street and eventually stopping on double red lines, halting traffic.

It was a large lorry pulling a flatbed covered with theater scenery. Three “actors” were performing on it for the benefit of pedestrians and cars trying to go around the lorry. Perkins had never seen anything like this in all his many years on the South Bank. For one thing, lorries weren’t allowed on that particular road.

Perkins grabbed the radio from his belt and contacted his second-in-command, PC Blake, who was stationed on the other side of the theater.

“Yes, sir?”

“Blake, have you seen the lorry over here on Theatre Avenue?”

“What lorry?”

“There’s a bloody lorry with actors on the back of it. They’re doing some kind of show. It’s causing all kinds of problems over here.”

“I don’t know nothin’ about it, sir.”

“Get on to the box office and ask them if this belongs to the theater.”

“Will do.”

Blake signed off and Perkins strode toward the lorry, preparing to give someone hell. He had to stop, though, and direct a number of cars around the lorry and then run back to the intersection to unclog a maze of taxis that formed in less than ten seconds. Perkins cursed and slapped the bonnet of one of the taxis, telling the driver to hurry around and lay off the horn.

Blake came back on the radio.

“Perkins here.”

“Sir, the theater people don’t know anything about it. They didn’t provide this so-called entertainment.”

“Right. That does it. Thank you, Blake.”

Perkins replaced the radio and took a deep breath. He was angry now and he pitied the poor soul he was about to berate. He left the chaos at the intersection and walked with purpose to the lorry.

The actors were dressed in medieval attire and speaking lines that no one could hear due to the traffic on the bridge overhead. What was the bloody point? Perkins wondered.

The driver sat in the cab bobbing his upper body in a strange fashion. He appeared to be Middle Eastern — he had a dark complexion and black facial hair.

Perkins stepped up to the window and rapped loudly on it.

“Listen here! You’ve got to move! You’re not supposed to be here!” Perkins shouted.

The driver didn’t look at him. He continued to bob back and forth, muttering something to himself.

“Sir! Please lower your window! I’m speaking to you!”

Perkins rapped the window once more and then he understood what the driver was doing.

He was praying.

As soon as the realization hit him, Perkins’s heart nearly stopped. He gasped and stepped back from the lorry, but it was too late.

The explosives were so powerful that they obliterated the lorry and its troupe of suicide “actors,” eight vehicles on Theatre Avenue, and caused a section of Waterloo Bridge to collapse. Fourteen motorcars fell off the bridge, causing a massive, burning pileup. The side of the theater facing the blast was singed and several windows were broken. Sixty-two people were killed and nearly a hundred and fifty were injured.

Constable Perkins never had to supervise traffic at the National Theatre again.

Each major broadcast network covered the disaster in the U.K., but it was BBC-2 that featured an exclusive interview with a Turkish terrorism expert that happened to be in London on business. A bright female reporter caught Namik Basaran as the fifty-two-year-old man rushed out of the Ritz Hotel to travel to Embankment and view the scene personally. Close beside him was his bodyguard, a broad-shouldered man wearing a turban.

“Mr. Basaran, can you tell us what your visit to London entails?” the reporter asked.

Basaran, a swarthy man with a noticeable skin condition, spoke to the camera. “I am the head of a not-for-profit charity organization in Turkey called Tirma. For the four years of our existence we have provided relief aid to victims of terrorist attacks all over the world. The United Kingdom is no exception. I hope to authorize the release of several thousand pounds to help the victims of this horrible tragedy.”

“It is said that you’re an expert on terrorism. Could you elaborate on this?”

Basaran shook his head. “No one is an ‘expert’ on terrorism. That is nonsense. Terrorism is fluid. It changes daily. Terrorism used to be hijacking an aircraft and forcing the pilot to take it to another location. This evolved into holding hostages aboard the craft to force governments to do something. Now we have hijackers willing to die on an airplane and kill every passenger along with them. Terrorists have become more desperate and bold.”

A label identifying him appeared on the screen—“Namik Basaran, president and CEO, Akdabar Enterprises — Chairman, Tirma.”

“Is it true that you’re a victim of terrorism yourself?”

Basaran lightly touched the skin on his face. Had it been grafted? “That’s a very painful subject for me and I’d rather not go into it here on television. Suffice it to say that I’ve experienced tragedy in my life and have dedicated the personal profits I make from my legitimate company, Akdabar Enterprises, to benefit Tirma. I have spent years studying the terrorist situation in the Middle East and other parts of the world and have made contacts that are beneficial for those of us who want to stamp out terrorism.”

“Do you have any idea who was behind what happened on the South Bank this evening?”

Basaran’s eyes flared as he said, “It’s too early to say for certain, but I wouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow the British government receives a message from the Shadows claiming responsibility.”

“Sir, do you think the Shadows are the most dangerous terrorist network in the world? Some say that they have surpassed the prominence formerly held by such groups as al Qaeda and Hizballah.”

“I’m afraid I have to agree that this is true. The Shadows are becoming more powerful every day. They are a force that the governments of the world will soon be reckoning with on a major scale. That’s all, I must hurry. I want to see the site firsthand so I can make a report to our board of ambassadors back in Turkey. Thank you. Come along, Farid.”

The bodyguard led Basaran out of the way of the camera, and they both got into the back of a limousine.

The reporter addressed the camera: “That was Namik Basaran, chairman of a victim-relief charity organization based in Turkey. If what Mr. Basaran says is correct, then the Shadows have struck again. To date this mysterious group of terrorists has claimed responsibility for several recent attacks in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, the most recent one being the tragedy two weeks ago in Nice, France. This is Susan Harp for BBC-2.”